Jeff Worsham - Other Peoples Money: Policy Change, Congress, and Bank Regulation

Series Editor, Paul A. Sabatier

Other Peoples Money: Policy Change, Congress, and Bank Regulation, Jeffrey Worsham

Games Real Actors Play: Actor-Centered Institutionalism in Public Policy Research, Fritz Scharpf

Parties, Policies, and Democracy, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Richard I. Hofferbert, and Ian Budge

Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach, edited by Paul A. Sabatier and Hank C. Jenkins-Smith

Institutional Incentives and Sustainable Development: Infrastructure Policies in Perspective, Elinor Ostrom, Larry Schroeder, and Susan Wynne

To Debby Kayoko

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This book offers an explanation of policymaking that builds on the work of a variety of scholars. Ken Meier, Cathy Johnson, Chuck Jones, and Graham Wilson were mentors at the University of Wisconsin, where I obtained my Ph.D. It was their collective humor, patience, and insight that got the ball rolling in my work on subsystems. My colleagues in the Department of Political Science at West Virginia University, especially Kevin Leyden and John Kilwin as well as numerous panel chairs and discussants (you know who you are) at several professional conferences provided several occasionsformal and informalfor me to bounce ideas off them, rattle on about financial regulation, and generally bore them with the world of subsystems. For this they deserve thanks. The government-documents librarians at West Virginia UniversityKeven Fredette, Christine Chang, and Marian Armour-Gemmanguided me through the morass that makes up any librarys government-documents collection. Paul Sabatier as series editor and informal copy editor, Diane Hess as official copy editor, Melanie Stafford as associate project editor, Leo Wiegman as editor and lunch provider, and an anonymous reviewer provided valuable input. Finally, my wife contributed to this project in so many ways that it is as much her book as mine. Her patience in listening to me work my way through the project wone more time during our walks to work, over dinner, while working out or watching a movieyou get the pictureearns her not only thanks but a promise not to discuss the second book unless she brings it up first.

Jeffrey Worsham

Why study subsystems? Because that is where the action is. This simple truth is too often overlooked. Subsystems developed as a solution to the problem of making policy in the rough and tumble world of the American polity. Their growth parallels the development of the congressional committee system and the administrative state. Indeed, they are intimately linked to both. Through a combination of historical case studies of key periods of institutional and ideational change, and more systematic empirical documentation of interest group politics, this study traces not only the evolution of the financial subsystem but offers an explanation for its longevity.